


Blood Tastes Like Water

by faerie_lightss



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Dom/sub Undertones, Draco Malfoy Has Daddy Issues, Draco Malfoy Has Issues, Draco Malfoy Needs a Hug, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eventual Smut, F/M, Manipulative Tom Riddle, Not Canon Compliant - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Pining Draco Malfoy, Possessive Tom Riddle, Sad, Slow Burn, Smut, Tom Riddle is His Own Warning, probably gonna be sad
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 15:55:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 11,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26700265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faerie_lightss/pseuds/faerie_lightss
Summary: The summer before your sixth year at Hogwarts had been doused in grief. Cold and miserable and utterly unshakable, you wonder whether you will ever find salvation.Draco Malfoy is caught in his own silent battle of wills. He doesn't know if he is strong enough.A diary, a secret chamber, and a mysterious dark-haired boy will bring into question all you thought you knew about the world.A tale of trust and betrayal; hurting and healing."No matter how much we want it....some stories just don't have a happy ending."
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Reader, Tom Riddle/Reader
Comments: 8
Kudos: 98





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "ANAGNOROSIS: the point in a play, novel, etc., in which a principal character recognizes or discovers another character's true identity or the true nature of their own circumstances."

The train ride back to Hogwarts was, like the summer before it, tainted with an infrangible sadness. Since Sirius’ death nothing had quite felt real. It was as though you were a spectator - your head two feet away from your body, watching people and things and days pass you by with no end in sight. The holiday had been mostly spent in your bedroom, each day somewhere between wailing for the mercy of some- any -God, and a hollowness that you couldn’t shake away. Your exceptional OWLs results qualified you for some advanced classes this year, and the relief you felt when you had opened the letter confirming this stemmed undoubtedly from the quiet gratitude that maybe you would be busy enough to forget.  
Forget.  
That word seemed almost impossible. Dangling just out of your reach, begging you to overstretch for it and topple into oblivion. How could you possibly forget? Forget the screams and the flashes and the blistering white hot agony that choked you when Sirius fell through the veil. Tears pricked your eyes and shook you back to reality. You were alone in the carriage save for two first years comparing the sweets they had bought earlier in the journey. Outside the window, the sky was finally beginning to darken from the warm September glow into a wan purple: the hue beneath a sleepless eye - often, lately, your own. The colour washed the barely-visible Hogwarts in a sickly light, as though it, too, felt the hum of evil in the air.

The Great Hall was bright and warm and abuzz with a hundred different conversations all at once. To your left, Ron was speaking incoherently through a mouthful of jelly, ignorant of Hermione’s disdain that he was - “eating when your best friend is missing!” You couldn’t help but roll your eyes at this; you loved Hermione, you did, but there were moments she could be a little overbearing. Besides, her concern was unnecessary, because Harry came stumbling through the large oak doors several seconds later. He was covered in blood. Your subconscious drifted back to that day - those events now flicking through your mind like a photo album.  
“What happened to you?” Someone further down the table asked him; he shrugged it off.  
Conversation resumed, and continued in a sluggish, reluctant recount of summer exploits until Dumbledore cleared his throat and the room fell silent. 

There was some calm, quiet energy about Dumbledore - one you could never quite put your finger on - that seemed all-knowing yet totally intrigued. Nobody doubted his abilities as a headmaster (at least, nobody with whom you chose to associate), but his ability to hold and maintain the full attention of every person in a room was a singular marvel. The usual formalities of his yearly speech barely registered in your mind, and you weren’t fully paying attention, picking at your finger nails until his utterance that “Professor Snape will be filling the position of Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher.”  
It had been something of a running joke among your peers that Defence Against the Dark Arts was a post whose inhabitants rarely stayed for long. In your fourth year, Seamus Finnegan had joked that “it’s the most dangerous job in the whole wizarding world.”  
At the mention of their Head of House, you heard some rowdy cheers erupt from the Slytherin table. Looking over, however, your eye caught a head of icy blond hair, and skin as pale to match. If anyone else’s summer had proven excruciating, it was Malfoy’s. Several rumours had already been circulating that his father was placed in Azkaban for his involvement with the Dark Lord, and it was Harry who, in a letter he sent to you over the holiday, confirmed it to be true.  
Something had changed about Draco over the summer - his typical scowl of arrogant contempt had been replaced with something sadder. Something hollower. The loneliness in those pale blue eyes could not be disguised by his erect carriage and feigned nonchalance.  
You indulged, briefly, guiltily, in the romantic notion that maybe you were two forlorn souls amongst a sea of blissful idiots.  
It was when his eyes locked on you, mouth already twisted back into that disdainful snarl, that you remembered. Draco Malfoy did not care about you, or your sadness, or your foolish romantic indulgences. Draco Malfoy did not play nice.

You were ushered back to the Gryffindor common room, the hallway a cacophony of first years’ exclamations at the stairs - even you had to admit, there was some residual excitement as the heavy stone rumbled beneath your feet - and merry exultations from the paintings, welcoming every student back for another year at Hogwarts. Outside the Gryffindor common room - as was annual tradition - the students huddled around the entryway to hear the fat lady proclaim the password, to be used right until school ended in July.  
“Welcome back, my lovelies!” She sang. “Keep your ears peeled children; I will say the password once and only once.” A hush fell.  
One year, Fred and George managed to hex the doorway so that, while the password was Grindylow, the painting would only swing open at the merry exclamation of “I’m in love with Professor Snape.” It was a grand success for about a week before someone - their brother, Percy, they had speculated - reported them to McGonagall. Gryffindor did not win the house cup that year.  
“Anagnorisis!” Pulled you from your reverie. It was a word you were unfamiliar with. Hermione, however, wasn’t, and as you filed into the common room, she began explaining its literary significance to any unfortunate souls who happened to be in her vicinity.

You spent very little time in the common room that evening, choosing instead to unpack all your things and place them meticulously neatly in your drawers. Having already been given your timetable - free periods reduced from nine to a pitiful two thanks to the advanced potions and arithmancy classes bulking up your busy schedule - you plucked tomorrow’s books from your suitcase, throwing the rest into the bottom drawer, beneath your clothes. Afterwards, there was nothing much to do but lay on your bed for an hour or so before the others began trickling in. The events of the evening, arriving back at Hogwarts had distracted your heavy head for a while. Now, though, the dull ache of sorrow set its way back in. Maybe it was selfish of you, to be grieving so bitterly over Sirius - Harry’s godfather, and a man you hardly knew before last year - but you couldn’t help yourself. In a way, the secret pain almost felt thrilling, as though in some hedonistic way you finally had a reason to look at the world through somber, sober eyes. Your wandering mind found its way back to Draco, sitting alone - though surrounded by his peers - in the Great Hall. It had been strange, catching him in a moment of doubt - so much so that you wondered whether you really even had.  
Either way, it was a reminder that - no matter how hard the Ministry tried to hide it, no matter how innocent and oblivious the new students, no matter how desperately you wanted it to go away - something dark was on the horizon, and you could not shake it away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi  
> I hope you enjoyed my first foray into fan fiction (entirely inspired by the fact that hp has been dominating my tiktok fyp lately)  
> I've got a vague outline for this, but updates may be few & far between  
> any/all feedback is welcome :)


	2. Chapter 2

Your potions class the next morning finally brought with it a comforting sense of routine - though your professor stood notably outside the realm of your familiarity. Short, greying, with a bulbous nose and cheeks flushed red from alcohol, Horace Slughorn was a merry man in every sense of the word. His voice, slow, with the intent of having intention, was filled with a crude imitation of Dumbledore’s unwavering wisdom; nonetheless he silenced the class with the confidence of a man who had been teaching for fifty years and plucked a scrap of parchment from his pocket - which, to the utmost dismay of your peers - he professed to be a “seating plan.”  
As he read from the list of names and the amount of people around you withered, things were looking up - Gryffindors seated with Gryffindors and the like. This was until, pointing at a desk in the back corner of the room, he declared that you were to be seated with Malfoy. A year or two ago, you would have outright objected to this. Now, though - perhaps biased by yesterday evening’s lingering poetic lamentation - you followed him as he skulked to the back of the room, casting you no more than a sideways glance as you took your seat.

Several pewter cauldrons were bubbling noisily at the front of the room, and as the class settled down Slughorn revealed that they contained veritaserum - a brew that you had found awareness of several years prior, during an obsessive bout of determination that you would go on to be a healer upon leaving Hogwarts - and amortentia, “the most powerful love potion in the world.” From the back corner of the room, though curiosity was ebbing away at you, you couldn’t smell the potion. Nonetheless, several of your classmates at the front of the room had already begun leaning in, whispering speculatively, clandestinely, about who exactly they could be smelling. Slughorn placed a lid over the pot, and you thought you heard a snigger from Draco. The room returned to a state of quiet - though now notably more eager - attention.  
Your professor reached into his pocket a second time, now removing a small but ornate vial. You wondered what other secrets he might be harbouring away from prying eyes.  
“Felix Felicis, more commonly known as-“  
“Liquid luck,” Hermione quickly interjected. The man’s jolly smile faltered a moment at the interruption, but he persevered. 

The task, if truth be told, was simple. Admittedly, the Draught of Living Death was a potion you’d not had a great deal of experience with, though this hardly seemed to matter when, wordlessly, Draco turned to collect the required ingredients. You wondered if his eagerness was a genuine interest in the potion or a determination to lay claim to the bottle of Felix Felicis Slughorn had promised to the first students to complete the challenge. Both were, to a degree, slightly concerning. His vow of silence was upheld devoutly for the next ten or so minutes, as he busied himself chopping, crumbling, and mixing, and ignoring all of your attempts to gingerly interject.  
“Is there anything I can do to help,” you asked tentatively. The answer, as you had assumed, was another side-eye and a shrug as he added a pinch of root of asphodel to the concoction. With a sigh of indignation, you let him be.  
Again, that small part of your mind, which seemed to be reserved for your darkest personal thoughts and speculations, wondered whether this had anything to do with his father’s imprisonment and his own alleged involvement with the Deatheaters.  
Draco’s father - Lucius Malfoy - was a man you had seen on very few occasions. As the patriarch of one of the most renowned pureblood families in England, you supposed this could be excused. However, from your many journeys to and from King’s Cross over the years, you knew that Draco’s parents never came to collect him - nor did they support him in any of the Quidditch matches he had played as a youth. Though you could never admit it to your friends or - in times of greater mental resolve - yourself, you felt sorry for Draco. Perhaps, if you were Hermione, there was a literary comparison to be made. Instead, you settled for a guilty reimagining of the world, wherein you pulled Draco from his father’s influence and into the light.  
And yet, despite these heroic fantasies, another small part of you burned with anger at the way you sat complacently next to the boy whose father may have had some indirect involvement with the events of the summer. A glance over at him - hunched over, brows furrowed, hard at work - made your throat constrict. 

A cheer erupted from the other end of the room, where Harry - whose late arrival to the lesson had only doubled Slughorn’s merriment - was stood by his pot surrounded by several of your other classmates and the professor himself, who handed the vial over to Harry with smug glee. It was common knowledge that Slughorn had a select few favourites - his Slug Club, as it had been coined - for whom he was always recruiting. Undoubtedly The Boy Who Lived would be a promising addition to his collection.

The lesson drew to a close and, as the others filed off to their next lessons, you paused to roll the tension from your shoulders. Slughorn - in his good mood - had, endearingly, forgotten himself and left the classroom with his students. Undoubtedly he would shuffle back through the door in a moment or two. Completely alone now, you closed your eyes for a long moment to ease the throbbing in your temples. Something about the morning had felt particularly oppressive, and - though not brushing against the sorrows that had burrowed their way into your brain - you did feel a certain melancholia. In an attempt to distract yourself, you rose from the stool, picked up your bag, and began a leisurely walk to the doorway, accepting now that you were going to be late for Muggle Studies.  
As you passed the front desk, the cauldron caught your attention. Amortentia: the most powerful love potion in the world. In a moment of girlishness, you leaned over to it and removed the lid. The potion itself was a deep, rich purple - and within it seemed to swirl flecks of gold, glistening majestically under the pallid lighting. Before you committed, you pondered who exactly you might love. Certainly not Ron - though his brothers were enticing at times - or Harry. In your third year you had found yourself utterly enamoured with Dean Thomas - until he made some juvenile comment on Lavender Brown and you denounced love for the rest of the year.  
Decisively, and before you could change your mind, you sucked in a deep breath.  
It smelled of nothing.

The rest of the day continued in a lax manner - easing back into things, as Professor Burbage had been saying when you barged into Muggle Studies ten minutes into the lesson - and when you finally shucked off your bag for the final time, late in the evening, you felt about ready to collapse. Nonetheless, in an attempt to promote within yourself a preparedness for the year ahead, you began removing the books from your bag and replacing them with whatever you may need for the next day. If you had been even slightly more exhausted, you may have missed the black, leather bound book that you pulled from the satchel. However, you stared at it. Turned it in your hand. Flicked through the pages. It was completely empty, and - indisputably - not yours. The conclusion that you’d accidentally taken it from Hermione’s bedside table was just forming in your mind when, etching itself onto the first page, clear as day, was your name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok as this progresses assume that chamber of secrets didn't happen and our boy harry just had a nice quiet second year


	3. Chapter 3

In utter confusion, you stared at the journal.  
What else was there really to do - especially as you watched the writing fade away, sinking back into the pages from which it was borne. Had your tiredness escalated so far, so quickly, that you had begun hallucinating?  
A well-timed answer offered itself as your name was retraced back into the same spot, dark green ink bleeding into the page. You sprung to life, grabbing a quill and ink pot from your bedside table and scribbling a short, _Yes?_  
It almost seemed a silly response - as though your confusion was presenting itself as irritation - but what else could you offer?  
Your own words disappeared into the page and a moment of fraught silence followed. Perhaps this was some bizarre, elaborate Fred-and-George prank, left behind to commemorate their presence at Hogwarts. It made sense, really - now that they owned their own practical jokes business they could easily have had the supplies to-  
An invisible pen began scrawling once more against the same, unblemished page.  
 _My name is Tom._  
You could have laughed. How nonchalant that comment was, appearing in a strange sentient diary that somehow knew your name. This was inconceivably bizarre; whomever this ‘Tom’ was, whatever it was that he wanted, could wait until tomorrow. Imbued with a concoction of exhaustion and frustration, you pulled open your top drawer, shoved yesterday’s neatly placed clothes aside to make a little well, and flung the book inside. Pointedly - as though _Tom_ could feel it, you then slammed the drawer closed.  
Behind you, the door opened, and you felt a cold breeze sweep through the room.  
Surely not.

“Is everything…alright?” Hermione asked.  
The feeling of ridiculousness crept back in, and you breathed a shaky laugh to yourself before turning to face her. She was still wearing her uniform, despite the now-dark sky outside. Her hair was pulled back into a slack ponytail, which she tightened as she fully entered the room.  
“Everything’s fine,” you said tersely, tiredly. As though to prove it, you gave her a wan smile and rubbed at your aching eyes.  
She was obviously not satisfied with the answer - though you knew she assumed it was your usual demons troubling you. Thankfully, she didn’t press the subject any further, and instead tugged off her tie and pulled her hair back down to fall in curls down her back. You gave in to tiredness, heaved your bag off the bed and onto the floor, and finally got under the covers.

The rest of the week continued in a blur. The journal hadn’t even crossed your mind; you were far too occupied with getting back into some semblance of a routine - though you still had just under two years, the prospect of your NEWTs was dangling ominously at the end of the proverbial tunnel. Though your dreams of being a healer had been short lived, you’d still found alchemy to be a relatively promising career option. So, it seemed, did Professor Slughorn, who cornered you after your third potions lesson that week.  
“I wondered if I might have a word,” he said tentatively, eyes glimmering with something that wasn’t quite sincerity. As soon as he uttered this, you knew what was to follow.  
Harry had already been roped into the Slug Club - as had Hermione. Ron and Seamus had, strangely enough, not.  
“Yes Professor?” you relented, pausing by the classroom door.  
Not only were you being offered a position in his collection of favourites, but he mentioned a “very exciting little get-together” which would be happening around Christmastime. He added with a wink that “you’re free to bring a plus-one.”  
Clearly Professor Slughorn did not take you to be incapable of love, unlike his damned potion.

That was something that had been playing on your mind - though it sounded awfully silly. You had wondered if there was something intrinsically, genetically wrong with you: some mutation that rendered you unmoved by affection; you wondered whether you’d had some kind of immunity to the potion’s effects - though you couldn’t possibly think what. Truthfully, it made you feel a little ridiculous, especially when, the evening after your rendezvous with Slughorn, it was a topic of conversation.  
You couldn’t really remember how it had started, only that Ron and Hermione were shouting across the table at one another, arguing about the moral implications of a love potion.  
“Well what did _you_ smell?” Ron asked incredulously, words slurred in a last ditch effort to keep flecks of chicken from flying out of his mouth. Hermione, who would have been the unlucky target, paused for a moment. Her cheeks turned a light shade of pink. You and Harry shared a glance.  
“Freshly mown grass, toothpaste and parchment,” she said quickly, bluntly. From several seats down, you heard a scoff, and turned to see Lavender Brown scowling into her tomato soup. Her infatuation with Ron had been a fairly new development - though undeniably one which had occupied most of her time as you’d noticed that wherever Ron was, Lavender was only a few steps behind. Perhaps if she had been the target of his food-cannon, her views on him might be less amorous.  
Oblivious to both the undertones of Hermione’s statement and the red-hot jealousy radiating from Lavender, Ron finally swallowed his mouthful and continued.  
“So are you trying to tell me you would have the willpower to not take the potion?”

Their shouting continued relentlessly; Harry had stopped trying to interject ages ago and was instead sucked into conversation with Seamus and Neville about something you weren’t interested enough to be privy to. Instead, you took a long breath. People, you realised, had probably started noticing your recent alienation. Though your closest friends knew why, most didn’t - perhaps instead they assumed you’d taken on some aloof arrogance over the summer. Maybe you had. Again the thought crossed your mind: the question of whether or not this was grief you were feeling or something darker, something guiltier - a longing to have something exciting happen to you. Not Harry, not your whole group, _you_. It was completely selfish, and you knew that, but it had mixed so thoroughly with the genuine grief you had been feeling that the two emotions had become inseparable.  
And then, the diary.  
At first, you hadn’t taken it to be anything more than some silly joke that had somehow found its way into your back pocket. Now, though, the buzz of the Great Hall quietened as your mind whirred to life. What if it wasn’t a prank? What if, somewhere out there, this _Tom_ truly needed your help? Not Harry’s. Not Hermione’s. Yours.

This thought was rousing enough to pull you from your seat. You excused yourself and set off out of the hall. Nobody seemed to mind your absence particularly, and you were thankful that your new mission wasn’t slowed by calls of “are you okay?” or “where are you going?” - neither of which you really had a good answer to anyway. You pushed open the heavy door and passed through into the empty corridor. At least, you thought it was empty.  
A set of urgent footsteps changed your mind. It didn’t really strike you - the instinct to hide or conceal yourself in any way - so Draco’s furrowed eyebrows raised in surprise for a brief second upon seeing you. He wasn't wearing his robes. Instead, Draco donned a dark green jumper (one that, as far as you knew, wasnt within the uniform) and his shirt beneath it, unbuttoned slightly. You cocked an eyebrow at this - a Thursday afternoon seemed a strange time for him and, presumably Pansy Parkinson, to share an intimate moment.  
Curious, still a little dizzy, and completely unable to help yourself, you dared to ask, “what’s the matter with you?”  
His brief shock had now been replaced with that grimace, which he had gotten better at convincingly portraying since the start of the week. No sadness in those eyes today, just irritation.  
“None of your business,” he spat. Maybe you were just projecting now, but it seemed a little half-hearted. Still, you doubted very much that he was going to pour his heart out to you, despite your ever-present heroic fantasies.  
“Where are you going?” Draco asked suspiciously. You halted on your way up the stairs .  
 _To make contact with a sentient diary that may or may not be fake._  
It wasn’t a very enticing statement, when put that way. If you’d said it aloud, he would probably have thought you were a little insane. Weren’t you? That was a thought you could mull over later. You spared him a haughty glance and responded.  
“Nowhere.”  
You set off up the stairs. Beneath you, a moment of doubt before he, too, continued to wherever he was going.

It was odd, really, your sudden interest in Draco. Undoubtedly he’d been a figure in your periphery for quite a while, though never really significant enough to warrant your attention. Maybe it was the sudden absence of his petty jibes that had caused it. Last year, as you recalled, he had devoted a lot of his time to the effort to find and destroy Dumbledore’s Army. This year, though, he seemed detached. Uninvolved. His idiot friends (though henchmen or cronies may have been a more apt description) had also seemed to take the hint, as you’d had very little bother from them.  
Your thoughts were pulled back to the task at hand when you reached the doorway to your dormitory. Bizarrely, annoyingly, you didn’t feel any sort of buildup to The Moment. You entertained the thought of going back into the common room and trying again: feeling with more conviction the blood pumping in your ears, the tremble in your breath, the slow outstretch of your hand.  
No. There was no time for that.  
You pushed open the door - everything looking perfectly normal, exactly how you’d left it - and made a beeline for that drawer. Beneath your slowly accumulating mess of clothes was a sliver of black leather. You pulled it out, sat on your unmade bed and produced a quill.  
 _What do you want?_


	4. Chapter 4

_The girls’ toilets. Second floor._

The phrase rung through your head like a taunt as you begun making your way back through the hallways. This had to be a joke. Part of you was even questioning why you’d bothered going along - assumedly all you’d find was some ridiculous message left by Fred and George for the unlucky butt of their greatest joke. The sky outside was beginning to grow dark already - autumn had spread fast - and students were making their way out of the Great Hall. A feeling of guilty relief overcame you when, upon looking down, you didn’t spot any of your friends. They’d want to come with you - of course they would: you’d all been inseparable since your first days at school - but something gnawing at your gut told you that even if this was nothing, even if it was all a joke, you wanted to do it alone.

Moaning Myrtle was a name you couldn’t quite call yourself familiar with. Several of your classmates had mentioned her - Harry had a particularly bizarre encounter with her during his preparations for the Tri-wizard Tournament - but until now, you’d had yet to encounter her. As you wandered through the desolate stone corridor of the second floor, up towards the entrance to the girls’ bathroom, you pondered how exactly she might look. Maybe she was enchanting - a ghost in every gothic respect: long, pale hair and sad, sparkling eyes. Maybe she was monstrous (though this detail may have been one people would have been inclined to mention) with sallow, sagging skin and claws for hands. Several feet away from the entrance, you began hearing a strange sort of wailing. It was not as eerie as perhaps you’d have liked it to be , and severely interrupted your thoughts.

Its source was, unsurprisingly, Moaning Myrtle herself. She was neither hauntingly beautiful nor hideously ugly.

In fact, she was rather plain.

Round, thin-rimmed glasses sat firmly atop her snub nose and, as she drifted about the room, far too lost in her lamentations to have noticed you, her hair floated behind her in two thick ponytails.

You glanced around, debating whether you should simply avoid talking to her. As with every other room in the castle, the walls were a thick, high, intricately carved stone. They met via an expansive ceiling with a rococo-style rose placed in the centre. Directly beneath this, concealing from your view the ornate window, was a pillar, with eight faucets placed neatly around it.

“Hello.” The wailing had stopped, you looked up to find her hovering above one of the cubicles, round-rimmed gaze focused on you.

“Hello,” you replied dumbly. It seemed, lately, that you’d found yourself in a rather unbreakable cycle of confusion and embarrassment. At present, you were experiencing both.

“What do you want?” Her voice, as you could have gathered from the racket she had been making moments ago, was nothing short of a whinge. Part of you may have felt bad for her, being made to spend eternity in a toilet, were it not for the fact that she had so far proven herself to be incredibly irritating.

Still, no harm in trying.

You held out to her the hand holding the diary. She floated down, intrigued, but, after a moment, recoiled away suddenly.

“What are you doing with that?” She pressed. If only you knew.

“Well, I was rather hoping that maybe you could tell me-“

She didn’t get a chance to, as a rumbling started from somewhere beneath your feet. In a sudden burst of panic, you looked up from the ground, only to find that she had retreated back to the cubicle. As the noise grew louder, your concerns that this was a prank diminished. Even Fred and George couldn’t pull off something this elaborate. The source of the rumbling finally made itself known when the pillar split in two, the sinks parting to reveal a long, dark tunnel downwards. Myrtle chuckled from behind you - still within the safety of the cubicle - and you realised that the only way you were really going to get closure was by biting the bullet and making your way down.

As most tunnels tend to be, the small space around you was dark and dank, and every few steps you heard the rhythmic dripping of water - you didn’t really want to imagine what kind of water - from somewhere just slightly ahead. It was the sort of place where a person, if they stayed long enough, could lose their mind - which is what you were beginning to think had happened to you, until the darkness in front of you finally gave way to a dim green hue.

When you passed through the exit, the space ahead was not one you’d generally imagine finding at the end of a school sewage system. A wide space stretched for what could be miles, and the eerie light that bounced off the pools of water on the stone floor appeared to be coming from somewhere further down. A rather hideous bust of a bearded man took up the far wall, and there was something unsettling about his gaping hole of a mouth.

Instinctively, uneasily, you gripped your wand, which had been taking residence in the hand that wasn’t holding the diary, tighter. You could still hear those drops of water bouncing off the ground every few seconds. Perhaps it wasn’t water at all, but blood pooling in the murky depths of water either side of you.

The very notion was unsettling enough to push you forward, and you walked with your wand held out, to the other end of the room (could you even call it that?). You stood in front of the bearded man. Gazed into his mouth. Complete darkness lay ahead of you.

“Fascinating isn’t it,” a voice came without warning from your right. Quietly, you thanked all the training Harry had put you through last year, and turned to face its owner. He was tall and dark haired, with a straight back and stiff shoulders - the kind of posture which can only lend itself to arrogant young men. His face, cast in a greyish light, was sharp, and his dark eyes shone with mirth at your discomfort. The robes he was wearing were the Slytherin colour, of course, though not an iteration of the uniform you were familiar with.

“Tom?” You asked rather stupidly, and felt that the quiver of your voice sort of undermined the ferocity with which you pointed your wand at him. It appeared that he noticed this too, as he glanced down at it and cocked an eyebrow. When he said nothing, you relieved yourself of the question that had yet to be answered.

“What do you want from me?”

Tom’s smile grew wider. He quirked his eyebrows once again, and tsked. Arms clasped smartly behind his back, he paced towards you, his steps in tandem with the droplets hitting the floor.

“Come now, don’t say it like that. Who says I want anything at all?” His tone was light and playful, but the hardness behind his eyes was far from it. It was your turn to cock an eyebrow now, and he showed little concern as his chest met your wand. You dropped it, suddenly feeling like a fool.

“Why did you bring me here?” You coaxed slowly, rephrasing your previous question.

It was now that he perked up; his ears seemed to prick and spur him from his easy, lax state.

“Are you familiar with Severus Snape?” A little taken aback, you nodded.

“I’d like you to keep an eye on him for me. I believe he’s….up to no good.” He smiled smugly at this, as though it were some inside joke you weren’t allowed to be in on.

It wasn’t completely foreign to you - the association of Snape with all things nefarious.

Of its own accord your mind began spinning its own narrative. Maybe Tom was a spy sent in from the Ministry to select a student - the most suitable for the task - to report back. And of all people, he chose you. Your heart swelled with pride. Unable to contain your curiosity now that he had indulged you once, you shifted the focus.

“Are you a student here?”

“I was.”

There was something in Tom’s voice that sounded wistful: a quiet undertone of nostalgia. Perhaps he had been expelled. Maybe he had been expelled for interfering with Snape’s personal affairs. Quietly, you resolved that this would not be the case this time. It wasn’t as if you weren’t familiar with all things clandestine; for Merlin’s sake you’d been a key player in the reinvention of the Order of the Phoenix, of course you could do something as banal as observing your professor. Whatever Snape was up to, whoever he might be putting in danger, you would put a stop to it. Help to, at least.

“Alright. I’ll help you.” You turned to look at this boy once more - your own eyes hardened with determination - and his mouth broke into one final smile. For someone who smirked as often as he did, you’d think it would meet his eyes at least once. His arm twitched, reached out, and he placed his hand atop yours - the one holding the diary.

An electric current ran through your arm, and you pulled your eyes away from his face. Your cheeks were, mortifyingly, getting hot.

“If ever you need to contact me, do so through this.” Feeling a sense of finality and, if truth be told, wanting an hour or two alone to fully process things, you turned away and began the walk back into the school. You had progressed barely a metre when he spoke again.

“Oh, and y/n? You must tell nobody. Our little secret.”

Something about him saying your name made the whole thing feel more real. You liked how it sounded coming from his mouth. You imagined how it would look on the front of the Daily Prophet, next to an article about Snape’s dark secrets and a picture of you, grinning, beside the Minster of Magic. As you walked back through that dark, dingy tunnel - footsteps matching the pace of the water droplets - you pictured the whispered tales of your bravery, the laudation and attention you would get, for infiltrating the Dark Lord’s secret plans. Not Dumbledore’s Army. Not Harry. You.


	5. Chapter 5

The walk back through the castle was somber. Moaning Myrtle seemed a little too eager to know exactly what you had been doing in the….whatever it was. You’d shrugged her off, told her that Fred and George had set you up (she wasn’t all too familiar with those names, but appeared to accept that as a good enough answer), and left the toilet. You were far enough away now that her wails had blended in with the great gusts of wind blustering past the castle, shaking the windowpanes and providing a haunting melody for you to set your thoughts to.

Truth be told, Snape’s sudden change of job was a mysterious one - everybody knew he had been vying after the Defence Against the Dark Arts post since he first became potions master. There seemed to be something, a connection, between everything that you couldn’t quite put your finger on; the imprisonment of Lucius Malfoy, Snape’s reassigned job post, and now…this. Tom.

The castle seemed to take on a different appearance at night; suits of armour moved and creaked at the corners of your eyes; phantom footsteps padded behind you, in front of you, seemingly inescapable. The hallways, though you knew them like the back of your hand, melded into one long labyrinth, weaving and winding ceaselessly into the cold, dark night. Nobody else was up. You must have completely lost track of time - it couldn’t have been later than 5pm when you ran from the Great Hall. You weren’t entirely sure where you were going either: returning to your dorm just felt wrong. Instead, you wandered the lonely halls, once again letting time pass you by, debating how exactly you were going to go about executing your task.

You had crossed into the school’s lower levels - somewhere close to the Slytherin common room, you’d imagined, after passing a window half submerged in the water of the Great Lake - upon whom a stillness had also fallen. It’s deep, inky depths moved languidly, lapping at the window. This area of the castle was one that you stayed clear of - if you could help it. It wasn’t the Slytherins or the throb of claustrophobia that drove you away, but a pervading sense of dread. Maybe it was cliche: you wondered whether the students who called these hallways home felt it too, or whether your ache for a phantom fear projected these feelings into the castle’s dark underbelly. Now, though - as the whole castle had shifted into something darker, more ominous, those feelings had subsided slightly. Part of you debated braving the short journey into Snape’s office; you could be in and out in a flash, peer through his belongings, sample anything of note, and be gone. It was dangerous - undeniably so - but you decided the merits far outweighed any risks.

Purpose pulled you back through the corridors. Your footsteps began picking up speed as you marched toward Snape’s office, which lay only a small distance away, parallel to the Potions classrooms. If your friends were with you, you lamented, they might have been able to provide a little extra protection - Harry with the Marauders’ Map and Invisibility Cloak, Hermione with an arsenal of spells in the case of any obstruction. But with that, of course, would be the price of your unwavering trust and honesty about your mission- something you weren’t ready to give just yet.

The door to Professor Snape’s office loomed long and large in front of you, casting a great back shadow over your form, blanketing you - and any other creatures roaming the hallways, a merciful blanket of secrecy. It was locked. Of course it was.

‘Alohomora,’ you breathed. The lock clicked open.

A moment of thick silence was your only wager as to whether or not any living being was inhabiting whatever dark, dusty room lay beyond that door. Finally, you pushed it open. The shadow that had been covering you melted away into the soft glow of candlelight, flickering over the room. In his - blessedly empty - office stood a round oak table, upon whom were meticulously placed piles of books and papers and empty ink pots. To the left was a large leather chair. It looked worn and tired. Unsurprisingly, the walls of the little room were lined with pots and jars and decanters, each filled with their own murky substances: each labelled in Snape’s handwriting.

You believed the best place to start was the papers on his desk, and so you half-closed the door behind you, leaving it open just a crack in case you needed to make any immediate escape.

The first book on the pile was an unassuming copy of _One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi_. You scoffed and placed it aside. Beneath it, a dark, luxurious green cover. It’s silver-embossed letters read: _A Brief History of Vows, Hexes and Curses._ It was small and light - though undeniably well read, as many of the edges of the pages had puckered from use; sticking out of the top was a scrap of parchment used as a placeholder. You opened the book.

_Chapter Seventeen: The Unbreakable Vow._

With a loud tear that bounced off the circular walls of the room, you ripped out the page.

The final book on the pile was a thick, well-read text bound in cracked black leather. Its lettering was small and inconspicuous, and a charcoal grey so dark you had to bring it up by the candle in order to read the title.

_Magick Moste Evile._

Gingerly, you thumbed it open to the first page.

It was an introduction by the text’s author, Godelot. You skimmed through it impatiently, until you came across one single sentence underlined in black ink.

_Horcruxes, however, are the wickedest of magical inventions, and I do not deign to speak of them any further._

Horcruxes? This was not a term you were familiar with. Just to double check, you flicked through the novel’s pages, eyes peeled for any further brief mention of a Horcrux. Upon finding nothing, you slammed it shut in frustration.

A ghostly wail slipped from the text, filling up the room once again with its melancholia.

Your heart stopped. Terrified of being caught, and wholly unsure what else to do, you buried it beneath the other two books and held your breath until the noise subsided to a dull groan.

You could feel your pulse in your throat now, not yet daring to move and disturb the newly restored silence. Instead, you pressed your back against the wall by the door, ears pricked for any noises that might echo through the corridor. What exactly would Snape do if he found you down here, rummaging through his unusual personal affairs? Perhaps you were being dramatic, but you wouldn’t out it past him to cast the killing curse: murder you silently, heave you into the Great Lake, and profess his utmost sorrows when they found you, claiming that you must have drowned.

You had gotten distracted imagining your funeral, almost entirely forgetting where you were in favour of the bundles of wild flowers you were sure to be buried with, when two sets of footsteps pounded the stone floor.

Before your funeral, would have to be your death - which suddenly seemed imminent.

You clamped a hand over your mouth, allowing only a sliver of air at a time to slip between your fingers and into your burning lungs. Your ears were straining to hear any clue as to who might be roaming the corridors at this hour; what met them was the unmistakable hum of Professor Snape’s voice.It was no more than a murmur. His words were, after all, meant to stay between him and whomever he was with - not cater to any who may be lurking several metres away, aching to be privy. It appeared that you had just caught the end of their conversation, as Snape’s voice was followed by the sound of a door closing. After a moment his footsteps continued, pacing ever closer to the half-open door of his study. It was too late to close it now - you knew it was - but why in Merlin’s name had you ever left it open? He would have no doubt that someone was in his office, and when he opened the door fully and found you there, pressed against his wall, you were most certainly a goner.

The footsteps came to a halt outside the door.

You began to pray to any god who may be listening.

He inhaled through his nose.

You pressed your back further into the wall.

Slowly - so unbearably slowly - the door began to creak open.

‘Professor Snape, I wonder if I might have a word.’

The door stopped moving.

‘Headmaster, I-‘

‘I’m afraid it’s really rather urgent.’

Dumbledore! Your saving grace! In that moment, as their footsteps continued along the corridor, you could have sobbed. You removed the hand from your mouth, and brought it shakily to your pocket to double check that the scrap of paper was there. Upon finding that it was, you slipped back through the door. This time, you closed it firmly behind you.

You set off in the opposite direction to the two professors; in order to get back upstairs now, you’d have to take a longer route past the Slytherin common room before being able to circle back and return safely to your own bed. The wind outside had slowed to a soft breeze, and it had instead begun raining. The droplets hit the window in a manner that you were relieved to find calming. Tom had chosen the right person for this job - you were sure no one else could have entered Snape’s office and lived to tell the tale. You continued your triumphant walk back through the long corridor, the rain beating like a drum, when - for the second time that night, something stopped you in your tracks.

Sniffles; whimpers.

Badly concealed ones at that.

Mentally, you willed yourself to ignore it - it was probably just a homesick first year - but you couldn’t. After all the evening’s excitement, you felt sure that this must mean something.

And it did. Of course it did.

Draco Malfoy sat curled on the ledge of the window you had passed not an hour earlier. He was burying his sobs in the palm of his right hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi !  
> I know these chapters are pretty short lol but I promise they'll gradually start getting longer as the story arc progresses  
> :)


	6. Chapter 6

You remained several metres away from him for a few seconds, wondering exactly what you were going to say - if anything at all. He was sat with one knee tucked up against his chin, the other leg dangling off the windowsill and skimming the floor. His hair was dappled with the blue light from the Lake, and several strands had fallen into his face, others were sticking to his forehead. You watched him take a shuddering breath, the hand that had been pinching his eyes closed now dragging down his face. It made him look gaunt. At last, he screwed his eyes closed tight, gave one final sniff, and opened them. It was only when he brought a hand up to wipe his nose that he caught sight of you. He jumped, and you realised you probably looked a little unnerving - standing silently in the shadows like one of the suits of armour that lined the halls. He cleared his throat.

‘What are you doing down here?’

He was trying to keep his voice steady, but it wavered a little. As you stepped forward, you could see just how much he must have been crying; his cold blue eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed, and the skin just below was greyish and sallow. Even the tip of his nose was tinted pink. It stained his pale complexion the colour of loneliness. If the situation weren’t so somber, perhaps you might have entertained the idea of telling him you were sleepwalking. If the air wasn’t so sad and quiet, maybe then you would have stuck your arms out in front of you and plodded back on your way, smacking your lips and pretending to snore. Those options didn’t really seem appropriate. Even more inappropriate, though, was the small voice that told you to put aside your pride and sit with him: rest a hand gently on his shoulder or his knee and tell him that he didn’t need to open up to you, but everything would be alright. You wondered, if he had been a member of your own house, Dean or Seamus or Neville, whether you could have brought yourself to do that.

Instead, you remained standing a safe distance away, arms folded defensively across your chest.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ Ignoring his question entirely and opting straight for the offensive was probably not the most compassionate thing to do, but you supposed it toed the line between breaking the ice entirely and maintaining the age-old inter-house hostility.

Draco scoffed and straightened his spine so that it rested stiffly against the wall. He didn’t commit to it fully, though: his head lolled away from you until it was pressed against the cool glass of the window.

A silence fell between you. You were both in checkmate. There was, however, a mutual understanding that one of you was going to have to say _something._ You debated what exactly you could tell him about why you’d been down there, so far from your bed. If you were Ginny, you’d tell him you’d been having a secret rendezvous with Blaise Zabini and saunter away. If you were Harry you could maybe rattle off some spiel about your scar, and how Draco ought to be careful because _I know what you’re up to._ You, however, were just as, if not more suspicious than him.

‘I like exploring the school at night.’ You lowered your arms to your sides. It wasn’t exactly a lie - over the course of the evening you had undeniably experienced a whole new side of the building. Draco scoffed again. He sniffed. He pulled his other leg up and tucked it underneath him. You suspected he probably knew you were lying.

‘So are you going to tell me what’s wrong?’

‘You wouldn’t understand.’

He said this with such surety that you almost believed him. Once again your mind flicked back to that guilty, delicious, imaginary version of your life where you brought him into the light. The version where you were two aching, grieving, forlorn souls destined to save one another from despair. You then recalled the time in your third year he had in arm in a sling for three months after Buckbeak scratched him. Maybe you were being blinded by your fantasies, and this was nothing more than another bout of petulancy over some small, ridiculous matter.

‘Try me,’ you offered, against your better judgement.

You knew, deep down, that whatever had caused his upset was no small matter. You also knew that you had no right to be privy to it. You wondered if he was waging the same battle in his mind - whether or not to tell you the truth.

‘I expect Snape’ll be seeing you in detention until you leave the school,’ he said suddenly, his voice almost returning to its usual cadence. There was a hint of humour in his words; it was one so rare that you indulged him immediately.

‘Only if he finds out it was me in his office.’

No part of you even wondered how he knew where you’d been; it was only weeks later, when it was much too late, that this moment played once again in your mind. Draco moved again, turning out so his back was now against the window, and he was fully facing you. The low light from the water shone behind him like a halo of deep cerulean. His face was obscured slightly now, but you could see the faintest hint of his trademark smirk returning to his lips.

‘Maybe I’ll tell him,’ he threatened. Strangely, you knew he was joking - though a year or so ago, you wouldn’t have put it past him. You debated making a joke about him and Snape, but upon reflection it was one reserved for your friends, and not this still slightly rigid conversation with boy you had previously considered one of your greatest nemeses.

The thought of sixteen year olds having nemeses was a silly one. Even after the horrors you had seen the previous summer. If truth be told, Draco Malfoy was not your nemesis. Not a friend either, but something floating in the uncanny ocean between the two. At this moment, in the silence of the night, with the Lake colouring the grey stone hallway in a wash of tranquil blue, you were okay with that.

You had begun feeling bolder, now that Draco was no longer so far from his usual self - now that you had evaded having to tell him the truth, and he had evaded having to acknowledge his own feelings - and decided to take a seat by him on the window ledge. The stone was cold, and you remained pressed against the opposite wall, but you tucked your legs beneath you and turned to face him. From the side, he could have been carved from marble. His skin was smooth and unblemished, and his jaw jutted out sharply. You supposed his attractiveness only made his usual smugness even more frustrating, but you didn’t mind it so much anymore.

In truth, getting a detention with Snape wasn’t such a bad idea - who knows what other secrets you could manage to drag from him. You wondered what secrets Draco may know about him. Now, of course, wasn’t the time to ask, but another thought brewing in the back of your mind told you to use this newly established armistice with him to your advantage, to pry from him whatever knowledge he was holding. Perhaps that was a little too malicious. In the space of only a few seconds you had developed and were ready to entirely discard this plan, when the thought of Tom crossed your mind. He (and assumedly the Ministry) were relying on you to get intel on Snape’s every move - you must make any sacrifices necessary.

‘Would you walk me back to my dorm?’ You asked Draco. He turned to look at you - his brows were furrowed and you wondered whether you had come on a little too strong. You opened your mouth to take it back, but he nodded.

‘Scared, y/l/n?’ He teased, standing up and waiting for you to do the same. You rolled your eyes playfully.

‘Terrified.’

His hand twitched and you wondered for a brief second if he was going to offer it to you. It remained at his side, so you got up and the two of you began walking together in a comfortable silence.

As you entered into the higher levels of the school, above the Great Lake, you realised that both the wind and rain outside had stopped, and a small sliver on the horizon had broken into an orange hue. It was nearly morning. Finally, the two of you reached the entrance to the Gryffindor common room. You paused.

‘I’ll see you in potions in, like, five hours,’ you joked. He nodded gently - kindly? - before turning away and making the long journey back without another word. You stood for a while and watched him: his dark silhouette grew smaller and smaller until he turned a corner and disappeared. He never once turned back to look at you which, you supposed, should be expected. You wondered whether this made you a bad person; whether manipulating him for your own ends made you just as bad as his father. You wondered - though only briefly - whether this really was just for your own ends, or whether some small part of you really did want to find friendship and solace in this kindred, lonely soul.

Deep in the castle, now several stories away, he was wondering the exact same thing.

**

You didn’t see him at breakfast. You assumed he was probably just sleeping late - you had longed to do the same thing but Hermione all but dragged you from your bed. Nonetheless, you found yourself unable to focus on the toast and the chatter and the sips of tea and orange juice. You stared, instead, at the empty space in his usual seat.

‘Are you alright, y/n?’ Neville placed a tentative hand on your shoulder, retracting it when you shook yourself awake and looked at him.

‘Yeah,’ you smiled. ‘Just didn’t sleep very well.’ Thankfully, nobody had woken up when you crept into your dorm. The clock had confirmed it was 3:17 in the morning when you finally curled up under your covers.

‘You should eat something,’ Hermione gestured to your cold jam on toast, ‘it might wake you up a bit.’

You chewed mindlessly on your pallid breakfast and tried to zone into your friends’ conversation. Snippets of it just passed between your ears - a mention of Ron and Lavender sitting together in the common room the night before (at which Hermione scoffed). Your first real attempt at participating was Harry’s mention of ‘the Half Blood Prince,’ which amused you just enough for you to ask ‘is that your new nickname?’

Harry only had the decency to look amused for a moment, before launching into an explanation of a potions book he had found the other day which had small annotations on each of the ingredients lists, and whose owner was the self professed Half Blood Prince.

‘Knowing your luck, Harry, its probably someone else looking to kill you,’ Ron added, between swigs of orange juice.

Finally, you were entering the potions classroom, which was already half full with your classmates. Draco was not one of them. Trying to push past the anxiety that he may not show up at all, you got seated in your position at the back of the room and pulled all the necessary items out of your bag. When, five or so minutes later, he finally arrived, his face showed no evidence of the gentler boy you met last night. He elbowed his way to the back of the room, that grimace slapped firmly onto his mouth. You decided not to greet him.

You didn’t have to.

‘Morning,’ he said. He wasn’t looking at you - face turned towards his back, from which he was wrestling his textbook.

‘Morning,’ you replied. ‘You sleep alright?’ It was a joke - one you hoped he would pick up on. Out of the corner of your eye you saw Hermione frowning at you, several rows ahead. Her eyes were narrowed in suspicion. You shrugged at her. This was the only reply you could give, as Draco sighed a laugh from his nose and drew your attention back.

‘You weren’t at breakfast,’ this made you cringe a little. He probably thought you were in love with him or something - you were not one for casual conversation and all you could really do was pray you didn’t sound like Lavender Brown.

‘Oh yeah, I was busy this morning.’

He didn’t say anymore and you were too busy inwardly figuring out how to communicate like a human being to push for an answer. The lesson started and continued in this comfortable fashion - the two of you passing comments and little else over the Muffling Draught you were brewing. With five minutes until the end of the lesson, Slughorn requested that those in his Slug Club ‘please stay seated, for further details about our Christmas….meeting’ (if you were unsubtle, Slughorn was painfully obvious). Draco tsked at this.

‘Aren’t you in the Slug Club?’ You were genuinely surprised - Draco had a natural aptitude for potions.

‘Nah. Wouldn’t want to be part of his stupid gang anyway. Are you?’

‘Yeah,’ you laughed awkwardly. Another idea was brewing in your mind - though you would really have to accept your position as Draco’s Lavender Brown if you saw it through.

‘Do you maybe…’ too late to turn back now. You sighed and turned to face him. Your cheeks were almost certainly glowing as red as your tie.

‘Do you maybe want to come to Slughorn’s Christmas party with me? As my plus one.’

Draco’s cheeks were not red. He remained completely unfazed. You continued before he could even speak.

‘It’s only that most of my friends are already going, so..’

‘Alright.’

It was one word. One word, two syllables and yet - for reasons you couldn’t yet explain - it filled your chest with warmth.


	7. Chapter 7

It was a challenging task, becoming Draco’s friend-

No. Friend was not the right word. At least, not at the beginning.

Not to mention that your own actual friends had begun noticing: after that particular potions lesson Hermione caught up to you on your way to Muggle Studies, in order to remind you that Draco was, in fact, the enemy. You knew this to be true. You had known it ever since your first year at Hogwarts, when he was a smarmy scrap of a child. But something seemed different now you’d caught a taste of the conflict brewing out in the real world. Even aside from your silly heroic daydreams you had begun to realise that there were bigger things to worry about than the Slytherin house. Not to mention Draco was your first real chance to find out more about Snape.

It was a Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson, a week or so after you asked Draco to accompany you to Slughorn’s Christmas party, when this armistice first came in especially useful.

If Snape had been excited by his new position, he had not yet shown it; you were several weeks into the term now and he was still yet to teach a practical lesson, favouring instead a more half-hearted reading from your textbooks to fill the hour. Your seat alone in the centre-left of the room provided just enough coverage to not really do any work, so instead you tended to fill the hours picking at your nails, or exchanging stealthy notes withRon, who was a row in front of you. Draco was behind you to the right, reduced to a flash of silver hair just visible in your periphery. Snape’s seating plan had somehow (unsurprisingly) worked in his favour, and he sat snugly between Blaise and Goyle - one of whom frequently kept the lessons interesting by making loud fart noises and still managing not to lose any House points - you wondered if Tom would have any interest in Snape’s shameless favouritism.

Speaking of Tom, since your first encounter the previous week, he hadn’t sent you any signs: any secret codes or hidden messages meant for only you to understand. If truth be told, you were beginning to find this Ministry-Spy business rather boring. Still, you couldn’t complain - there was always the notion that, maybe, he was waiting for you to come to him once you’d gathered sufficient intel.

It had reached the point of the lesson where Snape’s voice had dulled to a monotonous thud in the back of your skull: his words were blurred into a hum as you’d sat playing with your quill, pulling the feathers between your fingers. If it were a real pen you might have started tapping it on the desk, but doing that now would only result in a bent feather and inky hands. Worse than this, Ron, your usual co-conspirator, had ignore the hand behind him waving a scrap of parchment at his back for fifteen minutes. He was, instead, unsubtly exchanging notes with Lavender, who was sat in the front row of the classroom, and had so far lost your house fifty points for this exact crime.

Having given up on Ron by this point, you tapped your feet on the polished oak floor, drumming a quicker rhythm against the table with your fingers, and toying with whether you should fake some sudden bout of illness or start foaming at the mouth so that you might be released from this tedium.

However, your internal debate was cut short when, from the back of the room emerged a cacophony of shouting and swearing. You, along with everyone else, turned backwards to see that Goyle had somehow managed to knock over his ink pot, covering not only his textbook but somehow himself in thick black ink. Logistically, you were unsure how he had managed to angle himself in order to launch the pot so enthusiastically towards his own body, but Snape quickly silenced the room (including the idiot himself, whose yells were reduced to a rumble of complaint as he left the room to clean himself up).

In a typical teacherly fashion, one that Snape had not yet exhibited this year - or ever - he reprimanded Draco and Blaise for their friend’s misconduct, and made the executive decision to split them up. He, notably, did not take from them any house points.

You knew that it was not a favourable twist of fate or the mercy of the gods, but rather the fact that you were one of only two people in the room who had a spare seat next to them. Still, you couldn’t help but feel a smug sense of stepping in the right direction when Draco’s slightly ink-splattered hand pulled out the chair next to you and he sat down. The disruption had caused the room to burst into a low chatter and, with only ten minutes left of the lesson, Professor Snape seemed to give up and recline back into his own chair at the front of the room. He pulled out a book with a dark green cover - you recognised it immediately as _A Brief History of Vows, Hexes and Curses,_ the book you had ripped a page out of only a week or so ago. It was still in the pocket of your robe. Instinctively, you reached and hand down to thumb at the edges of the paper: you had not yet read it, too caught up in your actual school work to find the chance, and debated pulling it out and reading it now. Perhaps that would be a little too brazen - he must have realised by now that a page was missing, never mind one that he had specifically bookmarked as important.

‘What do you know of unbreakable vows?’ You asked the blonde haired by to your left, as nonchalantly as you could.

He shrugged. ‘Not a great deal. Only that you die if you break them.’

You nodded passively at that. ‘Makes sense.’

What didn’t make sense, however, was your professor’s interest in them. You supposed that maybe he could have made a vow with Voldemort - some sort of Death Eater initiation act, but surely he had been amongst their ranks for longer than the summer. You wondered if, perhaps, it wasn’t his initiation at all. You were once again reminded of the futility of this armistice with Draco - for all you knew he was one of them. Snape dismissed the class and you pushed the thought to the back of your mind. You were not ready to deal with it yet. Instead, you hurried out of the room and began forcing your way through the waves of students leaving their classrooms, toward the Gryffindor common room, where you intended to spend your free period. When the hallway grew quieter, you took another moment to dip into your pocket and feel the torn out page. You glanced behind you and pulled it out, unfolding it carefully.

Scribbled over the neatly printed text, in a scrawl you were growing to be familiar with, was:  
 _Second floor, Girls’ toilets._

Immediately you turned away from your destination, and began hurrying towards the staircase leading up to the second floor. Nobody was around now, and you were a little overwhelmed by the echoes of your footsteps as they pounded against the stone floor.

You spotted him before he saw you. He was leaning elegantly against one of the stalls, picking at his nails. Moaning Myrtle, on the other hand, was nowhere to be seen - presumably hiding from the intruder. You glanced over to your left and saw your own reflection in the faded blue glass of the mirror. You looked tired. Dishevelled. As you made your way over to Tom, you made some small effort to straighten your back and run a hand through your hair. When he saw you, he, too, stood up straight, already opening his mouth to say something when you cut him off.

‘I haven’t found anything-‘ he held up a hand and you closed your mouth immediately. He held some immense unspoken power about him - one you felt obliged to obey.

‘What do you know about unbreakable vows,’ he asked, eyes flicking down to the paper in your hand.

You knew nothing. You hadn’t even read the damn page yet.

‘Well, not a great deal,’ you were aware of how pathetic you sounded. So you tilted your head towards him conspiratorially and continued, ‘but I think Snape may have performed one with Voldemort.’

He looked down at you, eyebrows raised - probably in shock at your brazen use of the Dark Lord’s name. You wondered how the referred to him in the Ministry, but it wasn’t really the time to ask. You had also dismissed this theory already, but didn’t want to mention Draco just yet - you wanted to confirm his involvement for yourself first.

Tom plucked the piece of paper fro your hand, walking deeper into the room to stand by the large window facing the grounds. Its panels were fragmented and frosted so that nobody could see in or out, but he cast his gaze down for a moment, perhaps imagining what may be going on downstairs. Like an eager puppy, you followed him.

‘This is quite detailed for a school book. Where did you get it?’

You felt your face flush red and, looking down at your hands, you wondered just how reputable a source you would seem if you told him of the night you snuck into Snape’s office.

You didn’t have to. A smirk had etched itself onto Tom’s mouth.

‘I see,’ he crooned. ‘I trust you weren’t caught?’

You shook your head vehemently, thinking back to the pounding of your heart as Dumbledore pulled Snape away. Perhaps he was in on this.

‘Are you working with Professor Dumbledore?’ You asked, regretting it immediately when the mirth faded from his eyes and he folded the piece of paper back up, handing it to you.

‘Professor Dumbledore is aware of my presence, yes - but not your own involvement, so I’d thank you to keep it between us for now.’

His tone was harsh now, and once you took the paper from his grip he walked back to his original position by the cubicles.

‘I’d like to meet with you again tomorrow - I have a task for you. Come back here at ten o’clock tomorrow night. I’ll open the door to the chamber.’

He hadn’t asked a question but you nodded anyway, opening the room up to an awkward silence. Eventually, you turned away from him, breathing in deeply to calm your racing pulse before you left the room.

It felt, somehow, as though you had been told off - reprimanded for doing only what he had asked of you. Maybe you shouldn’t have mentioned Dumbledore. Yes, that’s exactly what it was - there was no time for your silly, unimportant questions. You were doing an important job, and your questions could wait. Despite all this, though, you were already aching for tomorrow night to come, anxious to see what exactly he could need.


End file.
